How do people feed families on £40 a week?

Luckystar

SandA wrote: »

Thanks for all your replies I have definitely took on board some excellent tips and will apply these when I next do the shopping.

To the above poster, I would love to try no meat days, but OH is a meatlover. He has OAS so the amount of veg and fruit I can offer him without him having a reaction is limited. Other then jacket potatoes with beans, which he complains about due to lack of meat, what else could I try?

Thanks

You could cook a couple of rashers of bacon or sausages (or both), chop and mix with the beans. Or use any scraps of meat leftover from other meals. I find doing this a little goes quite a long way so you aren't missing out on meat but not spending too much

tori.k

You couldn't do a whole shop from AF, but as I said it's great for bases if your not adverse to a bit of processed food and I couldn't say if totally unprocessed could be done at £50 a week unless your to a degree self sufficent in fruit& veg, I've never brought crisp from there more because they wouldn't last 5 mins in this household so I only buy what I need. In my last order I had ham Knorr stock cubes 17p a packet compared to £1.52 from a supermarket cooked up with some onion, potato and half bag of frozen peas thats lunch for 4 just under a £1 and one of your 5 a day.

As for meat I think a lot of it is perception on the plate, only my kids eat meat in this house (older teenage lads) for some reason I used to happily serve them one pork chop but with loin chops would plate 2 as it seemed so much smaller even tho once you removed the fat and bone from the chop there was usually less meat, now I just give them a bash with a rolling pin so it looks more on the plate nobody has even mentioned it, I also own a meat slicer joints are sliced thin and fanned over the plate to give the illusion of more, it also hides the fact that there is a bit more veg on the plate as the plate looks balanced, it's amazing what you can get away with with a bit of presentation, kids thought i'd gone posh when I started making sandwiches at home served on a plate with a side order of crisp's but really it's just I split one packet of crisp's between 2 like they would do in a cafe.

spiritwood

Edwardia wrote: »

I've been posting on MSE over a year now and although few people actually say that it's OK to eat junk, many many people on MSE do eat complete rubbish, and feed their kids on it too. It is possible to eat very well on not much money but too many people prioritise other things like designer clothes, SKY and holidays above decent nutritious food.

The consequences are already here.. obesity and diabetes epidemic, kids who won't necessarily live as long as their parents, and broadly being able to pick out the middle and upper class kids because they are less likely to be the short fat spotty unhealthy kids with missing teeth and health probs.

We are what we eat. Simples. Aldi 6 rather than Approved Foods crisps is obviously better. All bulk buying crisps does is encourage the buyer to eat more of them.

whilst you make some points that i very much agree with, you come across as very judgemental of other people who may well not have the resources that you do. ( and for resources read transport, mobility as well as money etc )... repeatedly listing your luxury diet and talking about organic food in the way you do ( and yes i eat organic too) and seafood in a time of austerity and hardship for many, is slightly crass i think. not everybody can afford stupidly priced food boxes etc. i agree that people eat too much rubbish but you certainly will not get folks to consider it while you witter on about "langoustines born in pure organic water near a place where angels live. and only on a thursday when the moon is in venus"

sorry to be so rude, but really, i have read a few of your posts and you sound totally out of touch and also a tad " let them eat cake".

spiritwood

SandA wrote: »

Thanks for all your replies I have definitely took on board some excellent tips and will apply these when I next do the shopping.

To the above poster, I would love to try no meat days, but OH is a meatlover. He has OAS so the amount of veg and fruit I can offer him without him having a reaction is limited. Other then jacket potatoes with beans, which he complains about due to lack of meat, what else could I try?

Thanks

he won't contribute to the food shop money and you do all the cooking AND he has the audacity to moan? seriously? tell him to cook and buy his own food then. awful sexist guff :mad::(

SandA

This evening we are going to do a bit of multi-shopping. Can't get to the butchers this time because OH isn't back from work till 5.30. But next week we are going to start with butchers and a fruit and veg shop.

So first trip is aldi, I need onions, potatoes, and parsnips. All of these are 0.49p each so bonus for me! Will have a look around see if I can get anything else on my list for cheaper. Next step is farmfoods, for teabags and milk and whatever else we can get cheaper. Then to tesco to get the rest of our shopping plus baby milk. We have a £5 of voucher if we spend over £40, which I suspect we will.

Hoping to aim for around £55 this week including £8 baby milk.

Wish we look all

MissAT

I think FireFox has some great ideas, I do things like add oats to spagetti bolognese and lentils to chilli and curries to make them more filling and need less meat.

Possibly consider buying frozen meat from the supermarket this tends to be cheaper and cooks just as well.

Cheaper cuts for stewed meats/cassaroles are also good because you can't tell the difference really.

flea72

tori.k wrote: »

.As for meat I think a lot of it is perception on the plate,

i totally agree. If i cut up a whole toad in the hole and only give people one sausage and some yorkie, they think im stingy. But if i cut the sausage into 4 and then make individual toads in a muffin tin, most people are full after 3. So infact only end up eating 3/4 sausage lol

Ive also started buying back bacon and splitting the rashers into the medallion and the steaky bit at the bottom. I use the medallions whole when we have a fry-up, and the offcut bit, for quiche, carbonara and scones/muffins. Makes it go twice as far

paulineb_2

If you get the aldi super six you cant go wrong with a pot of leek and tattie soup. Ive made a few soups over the past fortnight, Ive made spinach (and the rest of the spinach went in a curry), broccoli, roasted red pepper, potato and courgette and Im going to make more leek and tattie today. When I make soup I tend to make enough for the week, a big pot can last me 4 or 5 days. I struggle to eat potatoes, they just arent my favourite things, so I end up shoving them in a curry or mashing them, or making soup.

What I did was when I was meal planning, was to get a list of maybe 4 or 5 meals I could cook from scratch and then rotate them and add more as I go, leaving some space for when I wanted a "junk" meal which I would call a snack, such as beans on toast. Or sometimes I'll have Linda McCartney sausages or pies with potatoes or toast.

Its not that scary once you get cooking and when you go to Tescos for example, when you see what they are charging for a ready meal (for example they'll do a Thai curry for a fiver) and you know you can make it for a fraction of the cost, it gives you that incentive to keep going.

I have a lot of cookery books but I also cook from recipes I find on the internet. Hope it all goes well for you today.

Edwardia

spiritwood wrote: »

you come across as very judgemental of other people who may well not have the resources that you do. ( and for resources read transport, mobility as well as money etc )... repeatedly listing your luxury diet and talking about organic food in the way you do ( and yes i eat organic too) and seafood in a time of austerity and hardship for many, is slightly crass i think. not everybody can afford stupidly priced food boxes etc. i agree that people eat too much rubbish but you certainly will not get folks to consider it while you witter on about "langoustines born in pure organic water near a place where angels live. and only on a thursday when the moon is in venus"

sorry to be so rude, but really, i have read a few of your posts and you sound totally out of touch and also a tad " let them eat cake".

Sorry to be rude.. really ? Well actually I think you just put egg on your own face, because obviously you haven't read my posts as well as you say you have,.

If you had, you would know that we don't have a car, which is why I get food delivered (free, Riverford, free with Ocado SmartPass, 99p, Abel & Cole).

Secondly, the waffle re: langoustines is your own, since I bought them frozen from Morrisons at £3 a box. The wholesaler price for wild North Atlantic prawns per kilo is often considerably less than the price per kilo for farmed Indonesian/Vietnamese prawns in Tesco.

I bought pork loin steaks from Tesco and discovered 11% added water, sodium citrate, sodium acetate and dried glucose syrup. For someone with Type 2 diabetes, an unknown quantity of glucose was a no-no. I was so shaken up by it that we decided to go organic - which has really improved my health and OH feels better too.

I buy veg boxes from Ocado because I get 20% off with the SmartPass, but I only buy them if I'll use everything in one.

Before going organic, I relied on my mother to take me shopping to Lidl and ASDA once a fortnight and my OH to packhorse it to Lidl on foot, for more veg every weekend.

I still do go out shopping with my mother a couple of times a month and if I see cheaper organic veg etc in Lidl, Morrisons, ASDA I will buy it but there's very little around here.

I live in a town of 50,000 that doesn't have a bakery which bakes bread, a farmers' market, a fishmonger, and only one butcher and one greengrocer neither of which sell organic food.

It seems on MSE its OK to feed yourself and kids utter rubbish, in order to afford those designer clothes, holidays, SKY, boozy nights out etc.

Basically I'm being called a snob for wanting to eat good food, by someone who says she eats organic food herself. :rotfl:

You may call clothes from supermarkets and charity shops, no vacation since 1997, no TV let alone SKY, no smoking and no booze since Christmas a luxury lifestyle, but I don't.

I'm quite happy watching TV on catch up and saving £146pa. I don't feel the need to emblazon my body like a mobile billboard and get ripped off. I do miss vacations in the South of France every year but I'm not living with a millionaire father anymore, I live with my husband within his means.

If I was the snob you obviously think I am then I never would have married a man from a council estate and accquired in laws with criminal records.

I am not going to apologise for eating good food, anymore than I would apologise for being intelligent, bisexual,half-French, an ex-chef or marrying the man I love.

eagle_eye

PasturesNew wrote: »

My top list of saving money would include:
- make sure you never throw anything out. There's either a use for it - or a reason to not buy it again as you're not using it up.
- make sure you know the £/100g of everything you buy - and compare prices on that basis (if a shop isn't telling me the £/100g and I don't KNOW it's priced well, I walk away).
- if you are making things yourself, see if one ingredient is over-priced and can be dropped without noticing. e.g. peppers in chilli con carne when one pepper can add 50p to the price of the dish
- see if anything you are buying can be made yourself cheaper - e.g. I picked up a Heinz chilli tomato ketchup last week, then put it back and bought the regular/cheapest Tesco ketchup and I mix that with chilli powder.
- continually be aware of prices of everything you buy and make sure you're getting the best price you can.
- set a target of, say, £1/meal/person tops - if a meal's going to cost you more than that ever then think twice about whether it's a special meal/treat or if you can make something different/cheaper instead.

Some great tips there. I also use the points highlighted - mind you my target is not quite as low as £1 per person though.